Yearly Archive: 2013

28

I’ve not seen a post like this on the CBR webpage, so for now I’ll just post it to my own blog. I thought I’d take a minute to really look at what I read this year and see how I can change it up for next year’s challenge (for which I’ve already signed up – join me!

I originally signed up for the half cannonball, because in 2012 I think I read maybe 15 books, and 52 seemed a bit … much. But as I got into it I realized that with some long flights (thank you honeymoon!), some quick reads (thank you Bridget Jones!) and a healthy sprinkling of audio books (thank you Audible.com subscription!) it was actually going to be possible.

I usually read non-fiction, so this year I thought I’d try to get a few bits of fiction in there. I was pretty successful; 16 of my 52 books were of the fiction (if not high-brow literature) variety. Some were books I’d wanted to read (the aforementioned Bridget Jones trilogy), and others were books I discovered through media (The Handmaid’s Tale, Warm Bodies). But, true to form, the majority of books I picked were non-fiction. A huge chunk of those (14) were humorous memoirs or memoir-esque books, like Dan Savage’s American Savage, which was one of my favorites of the year. I also read seven science books, including one on forensic anthropology that was pretty riveting. Some etiquette books (three), a couple of fantasy novels (GAME OF THRONES), a couple of feminist books, and an interesting modern philosophy tome round out the bunch. And, I managed to read only books that I had never read before, which, near the end, was a bit of a challenge.

One thing I did after finishing up was go back to analyze the authors of these books. While so much of society seems to think that the straight white male point of view is ‘neutral’ and anything from another group is a niche, I’d like to make sure that I’m not just consuming books written by those folks.

On the gender front, I was pretty good – I read 28 books by women and 24 by men. Unfortunately, where race is concerned my authors were overwhelmingly white – like, 47 out of 52, which meant that only five books were written by people of color. That’s not acceptable. So my goal for 2014 is to aim for books written by men and women of color for the vast majority, unless a) it’s a book I already own or b) it is part of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, because I really want to get through books three and four before the next season starts. I also only read about three book by people who are openly not-heterosexual (either gay, lesbian or bi), and none by trans men or women, so I need to look into that more.

All in all, this was a really great first experience with the Cannonball Read. I’m excited to put together my reading list for 2014 and to get things started!

15

This is a few days late because Thursday I was here. Then we had friends over on Friday night, and have been busy holiday-ing since. But here are a few articles I’ve been reading this week between events.

– Salvation Army is fighting hard against the (deserved) image that it discriminates against LGBT folks. They may be getting better, but No Red Kettles has some evidence to suggest that they still don’t deserve the money of those who support LGBT people: Annual Reminder: Don’t Give to the Salvation Army

30

It seems appropriate that I finished this book over Thanksgiving weekend, given our national propensity towards eating a fair bit more than usual during this time. I’d seen this book on the shelves at the bookstore before, and ignored it because it seemed like another cheesy diet book. After a friend described it as a book that made her actively feel smarter, I picked it up.

Before I get into the book, I want to point out that people can be fat for many reasons (as the book will show), and that moreover it is absurd to suggest – as society so often does – that one has to lose weight or become skinny to have value (or to be healthy). Lots of people want to say that fat people are unhealthy because they are fat, but when it comes down to it you really can’t usually tell if someone is healthy simply by looking at them or if you know their height and weight. Moreover, I don’t think anyone owes it to anyone else to be healthy. I think everyone should have access to things that can help them be healthy, but I don’t think anyone owes ME their health. And yes, that includes fat people who some think cost the healthcare system more. First off, they don’t but secondly, if we’re going to start requiring fat people to lose weight because they might cost us more in health care, then there are a whole lot of other people (people who drive, people who ride in cars, people who smoke, people who ski and might break a leg, people who play professional football) who apparently need to change their behaviors because we think they might cost us more. Alright. On to the review.

The next time you’re around family discussing weight loss, obesity, or anything really related to diet and nutrition, and someone (usually smug, usually skinny) says “it’s a simple matter of physics: calories in has to equal calories out or you’ll gain or lose weight,” hand him a copy of this book, and tell him to not comment on such things until he’s read the whole thing. In addition to possibly contributing to his education, it’ll have the added benefit of shutting him up, because no one wants to hear from that douchey cousin anyway.

Mr. Taubes’ purpose with this book is to examine as much of the science behind weight gain / loss and the diseases that tend to be associated with it as possible. He’s not so much interested in proving or disproving any one hypothesis; he’s interested in seeing what is out there from the last 100+ years and trying to figure out if any of the conventional wisdom we hold regarding weight, nutrition and health stands up to scrutiny. It turns out much of it does not.

There is so much in this book that I can’t cover in this review (especially the discussion on why cholesterol tests may be measuring the wrong thing and ultimately not telling us what we think they are – I need to re-read that section to really understand it), but I wanted to pull out some interesting bits. While looking at some weight studies that have been done, Mr. Taubes pretty quickly dismisses the idea that people are fat because they ‘overeat’ (in fact he repeatedly uses many different studies to fight off this repellant ‘lack of willpower’ argument). The most interesting ones were the studies that had people eating the exact same diet and exerting the same amount of energy (usually these were prison inmates and thus easily tracked) and showing that across the board, some people gained weight, some stayed the same, and some may have lost weight. And among those gaining weight, some would gain two pounds, some would gain 10 or 15. Yes, those are just a few studies, but it does hold up when you think about the people you might know who seem to eat as much as or more than you and yet never gain any significant weight, while you might eat 1,500 calories a day, work out for 30 minutes six times a week, and struggle to fit into a size 16 pants. The question then becomes WHY does this happen?

Another interesting discussion revolved around exercise, and how it may have many health benefits, but that weight loss is not likely among those benefits. I’d read articles about this before; the thinking is that yes, you work out and burn some calories, but the attendant rise in hunger will usually cancel out any weight loss based solely on activity. Let’s say you work out on the elliptical for 30 minutes more than usual and burn and extra 250 calories; just off of the hunger that a workout can produce you might consume that extra 250 with a single Cliff bar on the walk home from the gym. The author is not saying that exercise doesn’t have health benefits; only that those benefits don’t necessarily include weight loss.

It’s so interesting that many of the studies, if properly interpreted, provide very different conclusions than the ones the authors of them – and the policy wonks who reference them – concluded. That then leads to a whole lot of confirmation bias – people looking for support for answers they already have decided are correct and only conducting studies or referencing studies that support the answers they want. So you get one study that claims that fat is bad (but doesn’t actually properly measure that); common sense says well, people who are fat have a lot of fat, so duh, eat less fat to have less fat, and the wheels are set in motion. But what Taubes’ meta-research shows is that it is not fat that makes people fat and keeps people from a lower weight, but simple sugars and carbohydrates.

That’s right – the data (annoyingly) seems to overwhelmingly support the ideas that those obnoxious Atkins / South Beach / no carb diet books promote. Sort of, although not necessarily for the reasons those book site. Taubes’ understanding of the research out there suggests that what matters is not necessarily the amount of energy we consume (via food) but the type we consume that impacts the energy that is available to us, and the consumption of carbohydrates (think flour and potatoes, not the kind found in veggies and fruits) hinders the ability to make use of the energy we already have stored in our body, while also adding to those stores and increasing our fat. The book goes into a lot of detail and is very dense, so it’s hard to synthesize it down to this review (he’s apparently followed this book up with a book targeted more at the average reader, not science readers). But I am going to say that the argument he makes was really convincing to me. There’s so much more to say, but this review is already silly long, so if you’re interested (or screaming NO YOU’RE WRONG while reading this), then pick up the book.

As I said, this is NOT a diet book; however, the epilogue does offer his thoughts on what he thinks his meta-research has shown and what that means for people who want to maintain certain weight levels and stave off some diseases (the section on sugar and diseases is enough for me to seriously contemplate giving up added sugar completely), but he points out that there is so much more research that should be done and IS NOT being done because society assumes it already gets it. It’s sort of like the drunk who drops her keys and then only looks for them under where the streetlight is shining; it’s the easiest place to look, but that doesn’t mean the keys are there, and she’s likely going to miss them if the light is only shining on a small bit of street. We seem so focused on the ‘conventional wisdom’ (and so few of us have really read the studies) but that wisdom seems to have really not worked for so many people, so perhaps it’s time to focus more on what we haven’t yet tested.

23

I was looking for another light comedic memoir to listen to on Audible, and this was perfect. It’s light but not fluffy, sweet but not saccharine, clean but not simple or boring. Yes, it is, as he says, ‘family friendly,’ but that doesn’t mean that it’s for you to listen to with your kids.

There are just a couple of problems with the book; it feels a little short, and it isn’t as linear as I would like. I do recognize that it’s a comedy book, and not a straight-up memoir, but the last chapter especially felt like it belonged somewhere else.

The stories Mr. Gaffigan tells are entertaining. The book revolves around his life as a father, but it opens with a story about travelling to the Grand Canyon while still childless, with a couple who had a newborn. It’s a great start, because it relates Gaffigan to the childless without making him sound patronizing when he later tells his stories involving parenthood. He recognizes the differences in the pre (or no) child life and the parent life.

From there he moves on to talking about the different ways that having children has affected his life. He has five kids in a two-bedroom NYC apartment, so he clearly has a lot to say on the matter. There are some great one-liners – like his description of a place that isn’t kid friendly: “I always think man, this place must be awesome, let’s get a sitter.” He also takes on sexism and pregnancy, pointing out the absurdity of people acting surprised or bummed when extremely attractive women get pregnant. Like, why wouldn’t they want to have kids?

I am not having children, so believe me when I say that non-parents and parents alike can enjoy this book. There is some excellent social commentary in there, such as when he delves into why people feel the need to comment on the number of children people have. I’m not an asshole, but it’s still a good reminder of what not to say to people when they tell you they’re having a kid.

I highly recommend the audio version, because you get to enjoy Gaffigan’s stellar delivery.

23

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page: Blackwater is a horrible, horrible, horrible company, right? Like, everyone with a conscience is aware of that fact? Everyone who works there is not a horrible person (many are just trying to survive), but we all know that the organization is bloody awful, yes?

Okay, so starting from that premise, why read a book that tells you in detail about how horrible it is? Because it’s good. Really good. It is very well researched, with a level of detail in the writing that brings home the realities of just how atrocious an organization this is.

Scahill provides a history of the company, from its roots in the southern U.S., through the Iraq war and into present day, where Blackwater (now ACADEMI) has truly terrifying plans. He discusses the problems of a mercenary army – recruitment, payment, accountability (well, lack thereof), lawlessness. He uses the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah as backdrop against which the book is set, returning to what happened, how it happened, and the impact on the families. That running story points out how expendable these contractors are to the company. Their lives may be on the line, and they may be getting great compensation (unless they are from South American or Africa, which Scahill addresses in the book), but in the end, the company doesn’t care about them. Their deaths are a PR issue, but that’s about it.

The biggest problem with contractors like Blackwater from the perspective of the county and the world is that they are essentially mercenaries. They are paid to protect the elite, to do things that our military might or might not be able to do, and they aren’t accountable to anyone. They may technically be subcontractors, but they aren’t covered by the same laws as private citizens, and they pretend to be military even though they don’t have the same oversight. They can do whatever they want with minimal consequences; claiming immunity as a quasi-military organization. It’s despicable.

From the perspective of the families of the contractors who are killed due to the careless policies of Blackwater (and, by extension, the U.S. government for contracting with them), these contractors don’t get the same respect and care as the military. Some of them may be doing work that troops would have done in the past, but because they aren’t military, they don’t get the same benefits, or support. Is that wrong? I don’t know. You can argue they know what they signed up for, but Blackwater is so shady that who knows what they were really told, and how much time they all had to really review what they signed.

Beyond the tasks Blackwater performed in Iraq and Afghanistan, they also ingratiated themselves in the Katrina response, taking part in disaster profiteering. They lied about saving lives, and tried to not pay the contractors the prevailing ways.

This company isn’t just bad for the reasons stated above; they are bad because of what they represent: a shift from governmental accountability to private (stockholder / owner) accountability. One thing about war is that the country is supposed to feel the consequences of it. It should keep us from just going to war with anyone we dislike, without cause. But as more of the actions are shifted to mercenary companies like Blackwater, who’s to speak up and say it’s not okay?

If you have any interest in this, and want to have some details to back up your understanding that Blackwater is just appalling, check out the book.